Robin Friend

Robin Friend's Bastard Countryside is an amalgamation of 15 years worth of work, journeying across the English countryside. Originally made for separate, unrelated projects, the pictures that make up this extensive body of work in time fused together to form this single, more expansive project. Published by Loose Joints in 2018. The title, Bastard Countryside, was a term first coined by French poet and novelist Victor Hugo in Les Misérables whilst describing the "city of Paris as an “amphibian”, stretching out into the countryside and devouring everything in its path", “somewhat ugly but bizarre, made up of two different natures.”

He had his first solo show at the National Gallery of London in 2018. It coincided with a film piece called Winged Bull in the Elephant Case he wrote and directed, as a collaboration with the choreographer Wayne McGregor. It told the story of the National Gallery during World War II when the galleries collection was hidden in a slate mine in North Wales. His ongoing project Bonfire Prayers explores what happens on Bonfire night in the town of Lewes, East Sussex. Commissions

In 2011 he photographed 120 artists for the Thames & Hudson book Sanctuary: British Artists and their Studios. The book was followed by Art Studio America in 2013, d documenting the private worlds of 115 Americant living artists.

Robin Friend (born 1983) is a British-Australian photographer. His book Bastard Countryside (2018), brought together "15 years worth of exploration" the British Landscape with a large format view camera. Included in this publication by Loose Joints is an essay the landscape writer Robert Macfarlane.